


I Lived My Dreams Today

by ssstrychnine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Noir, Canon-Typical Violence, Detective Noir, F/M, Post - A Storm of Swords
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Lannister is working as a Private Investigator when an old not-quite-friend comes to him for help dealing with a long dead mutual acquaintance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“In walks trouble,” Jaime mutters, tapping his cigarette against the rim of the ashtray. “Blonde, as usual.” 

He tips himself back in his chair, grinning as he watches a hand ghost over the frosted glass window of the door. It’s Brienne, he can tell because she’s a thousand feet tall and _not knocking _and because he hasn't been annoyed much in recent memory. It’s about time someone barged in and roughed up his life and Brienne _would_ be perfect for that. She’s done it before.__

__He drags hard on his cigarette, stubs it out, watches her not knocking for a moment longer. He hasn't been annoyed much recently because he hasn't seen _her_ recently. He wonders what has dragged her out of her cave. It’ll be bad, it always is. Last time was...he shakes his head, glances at the newspaper on his desk and flips it over. It wouldn't be wise to have an article about the Freys on display for Brienne. Freys hung by the neck and given a five hundred word write up on page six of the Westeros Standard. The law won’t have anything to do with _that_ particular family. Brienne’s not knocking might even have something to do with that, it would be just like her to get involved in something so close and so ugly._ _

__“Just knock already,” he calls finally and he’s rewarded by the door crashing open and Brienne stood in the arch, scowling majestically. “Light of my life,” Jaime says._ _

__“You shouldn't have _Private Investigator_ written on your door,” Brienne snaps, closing it behind her. “It’s not accurate. You should have _disgraced Private Investigator_ or maybe...unlicensed.”_ _

__“I have a licence.”_ _

__“You _had_ a licence,” Brienne points out. “This is illegal, Jaime.” _ _

__“Kitten, you’re hurting my feelings.”_ _

__“Good,” she wrinkles her nose, glances around the room, _his office_ (his bedroom, his everything). “A Lannister slumming it? I would have expected a bailout from daddy a long time ago, golden doorknobs and priceless artworks and obnoxious leather furniture.” _ _

__“I’m undercover,” Jaime says with a wink._ _

__“Undercover as a Private Investigator?”_ _

__Jaime taps a finger against the side of his nose, winks again, and Brienne rolls her eyes and slumps into the chair in front of his desk. It squeaks under her weight, she curls her fingers over the ends of the arms, plants her feet flat on the floor, steadies the noise. Jaime wants to wink at her again, but he doesn't want a black eye, and Brienne can be _difficult_. _ _

__“Are you here to break my furniture or do you actually want something investigated? Want to know if a squeeze is cheating? Because he is, kitten, I can tell you that for free.”_ _

__“Shut up.” Her mouth goes tight and her eyes harden. Blue eyes, beautiful actually, unlikely in that face. They dart to his hand, lying carefully flat on the desk in front of him in all it’s mangled glory. Her expression softens and he decides her eyes aren’t beautiful after all._ _

__“I am here about a job. It’s...it’s for Catelyn Stark,” she says._ _

__Jaime is on his feet before she’s finished the name and across the room before she looks at him. He opens the door and she stands. She looks _scared_ and he knows his expression must be something fierce because Brienne isn’t scared of anything. She fidgets and he kicks the door and the glass rattles in it’s frame and she stumbles forward like she’s on strings being pulled._ _

__“Jaime-”_ _

__“We’re not _friends_ , Miss Tarth,” he snarls. They _were_ friends, they had been friends._ _

__“...Mr Lannister,” she tries, wringing her hands._ _

__“Get out.”_ _

__Brienne does as she’s asked and he watches her as she trudges down the hallway, her head bowed. She’s wearing wide-legged trousers, like Katherine Hepburn, and they make her look broader than she is, almost like a man from behind except for the hair. But he knows she would look worse in a skirt, she looks like she’s wearing a costume when she dresses like a woman. He wishes she hadn't brought up old news, that they had stuck to insults instead of Starks and Lannisters, things that he’s turned his back on. He might want to talk to her without all of that, but maybe it’s all they really have in common._ _

__“Tell Lady Stark she should have stayed dead,” he calls out to her, and he watches her freeze then closes the door before she can turn back._ _


	2. Chapter 2

When Jaime Lannister is eight years old he decides he wants to be a detective. One like in the books he reads, one like Sam Spade in a hat and coat with a cigarette and a gun. One who saves the wrong girl or the right one. And he tells his father this and Tywin laughs and explains that _Lannister’s aren't in law **enforcement**_ and Jaime cries because his words are so sharp and his derision so _fast_ and Cersei laughs then too and that’s almost worse. She is supposed to be his _right girl_. 

He gets older and he takes up the family business but he reads the books still and watches the movies some and buys Cersei tights and coats and heels and tells her she looks like Veronica Lake and she still laughs at him but he lets her because he’ll always let her. He’s good at what he does, hurting people and stealing things. His father is proud. But Jaime thinks about saving girls too, thinks he might save Cersei, steal her away from her (drunk, fat, loud, _old_ ) husband, he’ll change their names and pull his hat down over his eyes. He still thinks shes the right girl, he still thinks she _needs_ saving.

He goes to war with the rest of them and he doesn't like to think on that too much, no one really does, and afterwards his father makes him pick up where he left off. The violence and the stealing feel different now but he is a Lannister who _doesn't think about the war_ so it really couldn't matter.

The thing with the Starks shatters what was already a little cracked in the first place (a little burnt, a little broken). They're a law family too but not like the Lannisters. They _are_ in law enforcement. Cersei's war-mad son shoots Deputy Commissioner Eddard Stark to make some incoherent statement and in desperation Cersei kidnaps eleven-year-old Sansa Stark for some kind of leverage and _loses_ eight-year-old Arya Stark trying to get more and Tywin Lannister decides it’s not a _good look_. He sends Jaime all shined up and grinning around a white flag and that had made things far worse. But Catelyn Stark had been good to him and Brienne Tarth had been good to him and now one of them was dead and the other had obviously lost her mind and _he_ was down the use of one hand and hadn't spoken to any member of his family in over a year. 

Jaime sighs, fishes his flask out from a desk drawer and takes a long swig. Brienne had been shaken far worse than he’d ever seen and he’d been with her the day Catelyn was killed. He didn't like the idea of Brienne being so scared, being anything other than a concrete force of nature, and he _really_ didn't like that she was talking about Catelyn like she was still alive. If she was alive everything would be different. Jaime wouldn't live where he worked and he wouldn't be hung up on by Cersei whenever he called her and he _would_ be able to pull a trigger with his right hand. He would live in blissful ignorance, surrounded by his toxic and terrible family, surrounded by guns he could use with both hands. Maybe it wouldn't change much at all, maybe he would still be _stuck_. Maybe him and Brienne would be closer. He drains the flask, carefully pulls on his gloves, and goes to find his coat. 

For awhile him and Brienne had frequented a basement bar with dirty lights and good alcohol. She would drink dry martinis and eat the olives before she touched the drink and he would drink old fashioneds first and whiskey neat after. He goes there now with some mind to _fix her_. He doesn't want her stuck in his head scared and uncertain, he wants her there like she _is_ , clear cut like nothing else he knows, so he goes to the only place he thinks she might be. 

She is sat in the booth they always used and she’s eating olives and her drink is at her elbow, untouched. He orders an old fashioned and takes it to the table. Somehow she looks different in the shadows and smoke of the bar. Her face is half a skull, gaunt and hollow eyed and her hair is pulled back. It hadn't been before and now he can see the blood-stained bandage across the back of one cheek. She looks half dead or already dead. Like Catelyn Stark. Jaime slides into the booth across from her. 

“Jaime,” she says, her voice sounding raw and strangled and cold with pain. “You have to...it’s a job...she’s...” 

“She’s dead,” he finishes for her. “What happened to you?” he reaches for her cheek and she flinches away before he can touch it. 

“A bite,” she mutters. “It doesn't matter, she’s asking for you, you ought to come. It’s about her daughters, they may be alive.” 

_Girls to save_ , Jaime thinks bitterly. Girls who are innocent and clean of blood and fire. 

“She would not want me to save them, I’m the wrong man a hundred times over.” 

“She does, she asked for you,” Brienne insists. “Perhaps she believes in redemption.” 

“She’s dead,” he repeats quietly. 

But Brienne is there, sat across from him and bleeding and _pleading_. She had helped him once, she had taken him in because Catelyn Stark willed it and they had become something like friends and Jaime was alive (and alone, and _alive_ ) because of her. And now, impossibly, Catelyn Stark was asking Brienne for something else and Jaime didn't think he could say no. 

So they leave and Brienne shrugs on a coat that ties at the waist and Jaime is reminded of girls in coats in clouds of smoke and clicking heels. Those girls wore dresses, those girls were beautiful and deadly, like Cersei. Brienne is ugly and innocent and in trousers and a shirt buttoned up to her throat. Brienne doesn't even smoke. But Jaime follows her anyway, out onto rain dampened streets where she flags down a taxi with a piercing whistle through nail bitten fingers. 

In the cab Jaime watches her closely, the way she is pressed as hard against the car door as she can. The way she acts like if he touched her she would crumple to dust. Her eyes shine wet sometimes but she blinks them back and nothing spills and she turns her head like she doesn't want him to notice. He wonders if the wound on her cheek is the kind that would sting when the salt of tears soaked the bandage. 

“This is a trap,” he says, twenty minutes into the drive. She had been too still and too quiet, he could taste death in this trip as well as she could. She looks at him and her eyes are dry and sharp. _She_ looks like a trap. The wrong kind of girl. The girl who burns cities down. But then her expression crumples and she looks out the window again, is _Brienne_ again (is someone else again), and Jaime is uncertain once more. 

The cabbie drops them in some alley and Brienne sets off with her hands stuffed into her coat pockets. Jaime lights a cigarette and breathes in smoke instead of fear. 

“Where’s my blindfold then?” he asks, a bad joke, and Brienne flinches and her eyes shine and Jaime laughs again. _A blindfold won’t be necessary_ , he thinks, _this is not a trip he will make again_. 

They reach a warehouse and there are men outside, hauling packages as large as they are wrapped in tarpaulin and rope onto the back of a truck. 

“Alright, _Lannister_?” one of them, sitting in the cab of the truck, asks Jaime. 

“We taking these to the furnace or the harbour?” another calls. 

“That’s what they did to our Lady,” the one in the cab sneers, his eyes still on Jaime, and they laugh together, bitter and ugly and full of rage not humour. 

The men roll down the garage door before they leave, and CROSSROADS is painted across it in the dark red of dead blood. 

Brienne pauses before the door and he knows what is coming. This is the moment she apologises, _she didn’t mean it, she had no choice_. He is ready to leave, he thinks he could take out the men pretty easily, and her, if he had to. But he doesn't. He doesn't want to, he thinks he might deserve whatever is behind the painted doors, and it would make sense for Brienne to drag him to his fate. Jaime understands _fate_ and for Brienne to save him only to then doom him would be just about right. Her fingers fumble at the scarf around her neck and then at the buttons of her shirt and she tugs at the collar and there are burns around her neck. A ring of red raw flesh, a nooses scar. 

“I’m sorry Jaime, I didn't know what to do,” she says quietly. He thinks of Freys and of Lady Stark and he steels himself as best as he can.

“You've nothing to apologise for,” he says, meaning it.

“They call her Stoneheart,” Brienne whispers and opens the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to memorde again who did initial beta-ing and then frontally who didn't beta but did read it and is an all around cool lady. I told you there would be more words! Not to mention ~dramatic final statements~ thank you all of reading!


	3. Chapter 3

There are people inside the warehouse. Living, breathing people and one impossibility. _Stoneheart_ was once a woman. Catelyn Stark, an Important Person. Catelyn Stark, a mother and a wife and an enemy to everyone Jaime once loved. Now she is cold flesh and bone. Her throat is slit and her skin bubbles, milk pale like it’s been soaking in dirty water, and her fingers are bloodstained. She is sitting on a wooden throne and she wears a water stained coat and she holds one bloody hand to her throat to speak around the wound. A wound she replicates with nooses.

“Lady Stark,” Jaime says.

Next to him Brienne is fumbling in a pocket. She pulls out a gun, a gun he gave her, his old weapon with a Lannister lion at the hilt that he couldn’t bear to look at. She doesn’t shoot, or even put a finger to the trigger, she drops the weapon to the floor and her hands fall to her sides.

There are nooses strung up all over the warehouse but no bodies hang for now. The names of Freys found hung flicker through his mind, newsprint deaths, a mystery that seems obvious now. It had been at the Frey towers where Catelyn Stark and Robb Stark and all their men had been slaughtered on Jaime’s fathers orders and Walder Frey’s cruelty. There are dark stains on the ground and Jaime has fought in a thousand wars, Jaime is a _Lannister_ , and he recognises blood stains when he sees them.

“Where is Podrick?” Brienne demands, walking passed him, not looking at him, her eyes fixed only on the thing that had once been Catelyn Stark. 

“The boy is safe,” Stoneheart’s voice is a gurgling rasp. “We will keep him for you.”

“I did as you asked,” Brienne cries. “I brought you...”

Jaime wants to take her hand and hold it, he doesn’t know how to comfort women in ways outside of touch, he doesn't really know that he should be comforting her at all, the girl that has likely got him killed. (He might take her hand to break her fingers and she would _deserve it_ ). But she is upset and it tugs at him somewhere and he knows she hadn't wanted this. He knows Podrick too, a boy who had once been employed by his brother Tyrion of all people. He wonders how Brienne came to care for him. Perhaps Brienne just cares for all lost and broken things.

“But you have not done everything that you swore,” Stoneheart says. “Where are my daughters?”

“I don’t know,” Brienne whispers and tears start to fall and soak the bandage on her cheek. Jaime frowns, pulls her back into place, ignores the indignant squawk she lets slip.

“You betrayed me for a child?” he hisses in her ear, quiet enough that only she can hear. He wants to dry her tears before he breaks her bones.

“ _You_ can handle yourself,” she snaps back, her tears already stopped. “He is innocent.” 

“ _Lannister_ ,” Stoneheart hisses, turning her eyes to him as if she were noticing him for the first time. “Take his weapons.” 

But Jaime moves before any of them can, taking his gun from it’s holster (his hand moves to the wrong side first, a mistake he corrects with only a flicker of pain) and placing it on the floor. Carefully he peels his gloves off before raising his arms in surrender, and even in the dim warehouse the burns are unmistakable. The missing fingers are unmistakable. A man in a stained yellow parka laughs. Lady Stoneheart is stone. 

“He’s maimed,” says a man in red, a shadow behind the Lady. 

“You hadn't heard? Everyone’s found it quite amusing, Jaime Lannister losing the only thing he was ever good for.” 

“It’s not hard to learn to shoot with your other hand,” the one in the parka says, his voice hard scorn.

“I’d rather have two hands, if it’s all the same to you,” Jaime tries at clenching his fist and hisses in pain at the impossibility of the movement. “It’s as functional as it is pretty and I never was all that ambidextrous.” 

He takes his gloves back from his pocket and gingerly puts them on again, leaves his gun on the floor, doesn't look at Brienne who is staring at him the same way someone might stare at an animal that’s been hit by a car but still lives. He thinks that if anyone can save him it will be her but he still can’t bear to see her look at him like that.

“I know why I’m here,” Jaime says, his voice carrying around the room. “I know you think I am responsible for what happened at your son’s wedding.”

“You’re a Lannister, you’re a criminal, you’re all responsible.”

“Not for this,” he insists. “I was with Brienne as _you_ arranged, I had no way of...”

“She has your gun, she is a traitor too.”

“It was just a gift, it wasn't...she has always been loyal to you and I have not been back to Casterly Rock or the Red Keep in more than a year. I have not been back with my family.” 

“Liar,” the man in red behind Stoneheart growls. He looks old and sad and bone weary, he looks at Jaime like he can see inside him.

“No, not really,” Jaime shrugs. “I want this done, I’m no longer a threat to you and I want this over just as much as you do. I thought it was.”

Catelyn ( _not_ Catelyn) looks at him for a long moment, her eyes strange beyond their milky film, like the man in red, like she can see something intangible. There are so many eyes on him, red eyes and dead eyes. It used to be they were only green.

“Make them fight,” the man in red suggests lazily. “Test the girl’s loyalty; a dead Lannister is a dead Lannister and is definitely no threat.”

Next to him Brienne freezes, she looks down at the guns on the floor, her gun etched in the lion that he should be carrying. He would beat her easily, she would let him, she’s crawling in guilt. She’s torn in two. Or maybe it would be the perfect match, maybe her fear would be fuel and his wounds are worse. _Turn and draw_. 

“No,” Stoneheart dismisses it with a jerk of her hand. “Give me the Freys.” 

“They’re all yours, do what you want to them God knows there’s too many.”

He wonders at her thinking that he has power, that an outcast Lannister can give her anyone, but he keeps his mouth shut and counts his blessings. His name means something even when he’s divorced from it. 

“You will find me both of my daughters. If they are dead, so are you.”

“Spectacular,” Jaime says bleakly. 

The Stark girls are gone. Everyone knows that they were last seen at the Red Keep and he knows that they are gone from there for certain (he spent a lot of time early on following his families movements while he raged and sulked and hated and _burned_ ). Arya Stark is probably dead in a ditch somewhere. Sansa was plucked from right under Cersei’s nose (and she raged and sulked and hated and _burned_ ) and no one has heard from her since. Stoneheart must know this is an impossible mission, or perhaps she hopes, like a mother might hope, for her remaining children’s lives. 

Jaime will die at the end of this. Jaime will run away to Italy or Spain, somewhere so hot no cold corpses could possibly follow him.

“We will keep Podrick Payne.”

“I want to see him,” Brienne announces. “If he is alive, you will show me him.”

Stoneheart nods, a cracking of bones, and some of her men disappear and come back soon after dragging an unconscious boy behind them. He is pale and bruised but his chest moves with breath and Brienne sags with relief and she almost falls. _An innocent_ , Jaime thinks. Like the Stark girls, like all the children caught up in this. Brienne is an innocent too but there is steel in her that is more than children have. She has fought every step of her journey and it’s spelled out in her haggard face and the wound on her cheek. Perhaps she has delusions of grandeur like he once did, perhaps she still thinks she might save someone who deserved saving. 

“If he dies...” she warns.

“He dies,” the man in red says, sounding weary. “You've nothing to bargain with.” 

Brienne watches Podrick’s chest rise and fall for a long moment, when she nods the boy is taken away.

“We’ll be off then,” Jaime says cheerfully, clapping his hands.

But Lady Stoneheart beckons them forward and her breath rattles against the wound in her throat and Jaime feels wrong walking away from his gun but he does it. Beside him he can hear Brienne breathing, sharp and fast with fear, with tears buried just below the surface. Up close Stoneheart is a nightmare. She smells of rotting meat dampened by water. She smells of old blood, or rust, of acrid gun smoke from the bullets that shattered her knees but didn't kill her.

“Brienne,” she rasps. “Kiss me.” 

Brienne’s sob escapes her throat but she kneels before the dead woman. Stoneheart reaches to her, pulls her face close with a bloodstained hand under her chin, and kisses the other woman on the mouth. Brienne’s eyes roll back in her head and she slumps over for a moment before shuddering back into life, choking and crying and scrambling to her feet and back into place. She doesn't look at Jaime but he _stares_ at her. 

“You next, Lannister,” Stoneheart growls and his gaze snaps back to her. 

“ _Why_ impossible. He tilts his head up to hers and her mouth is colder than anything he’s ever felt and then everything around his is red (and dead, and dead) and he’s falling. He comes to trembling and coughing and _furious_. He staggers to his feet, picks up his gun and jams it clumsily into the waistband of his trousers.

“We’re done here then?” he asks, his voice cracking like ice, shivering with rage and weak as a baby.

“Do not stray,” Stoneheart echoes and Jaime takes it as permission (which he _doesn't_ need) and stalks toward the exit.

Brienne picks up her gun and follows him and she sounds much stronger than he does, her footsteps sharp and quick. He can’t hear her breathing but he knows _he_ sounds like he’s run a marathon. He looks back at her and even her tears are gone and her head is high and her shoulders are squared and it only makes him angrier. 

When they get outside the sun has set and the alley is deserted. Brienne closes the door behind them and it’s like none of it ever happened, no kisses from dead women, no quests for dead children. They’re impossible things anyway. Jaime closes his eyes.

“We’ll need a car,” Brienne says, breaking it all and making it real again.

“Good luck,” Jaime snaps irritably, “Good luck with all of this.”

He leaves her stood on damp concrete with dry tears on her cheeks and death behind a door. She doesn't call after him (he listens for it, he wants her to, he would ignore her if she did), and as soon as he’s at the main road he flags down a cab and heads back to his office to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I managed one chapter where I actually answered to your comments, and like...I didn't even do that whole first chapter because I am just...a terrible person basically. Actually, replying to your lovely comments gives me extreme anxiety and I can't really do it without losing my mind a little bit so I probably won't but I really do appreciate them and I read every one and then stalk your ao3 pages for recs and lovely fic you've probably written. I do that. I really do. Anyway. Here is another chapter, I hope Stoneheart lives up to...something. I hope everything fits. Special thank yous to desi who's comment made me cry for real because I am a big baby and because she is the best of the best of the best.


	4. Chapter 4

Jaime dreams of a battlefield. There are guns and there is mud and there are soldiers. Everything is muted greens and greys and browns except for the blood which is so red it hurts to look at. He’s atop a thousand bodies, king on the mountain, and they look at him with sightless eyes and he knows he did this, carved his name in their flesh. 

There is someone climbing his mountain and he _hates_ them and he’s terrified. He wants these deaths for himself, he wants that power. He turns to one side and vomits and it’s as red as all that blood, and it tastes of rot. He’s rotting from the inside out, he knows this, he’s known it all his life. The person climbing reaches him and it’s Catelyn Stark, young and beautiful, and she smiles at him and kisses him and rips the flesh from her own body and offers it to him. He takes it because it will stop the rot, he presses it into himself, her flesh for his flesh, and then she breaks through her ribs and feeds him her organs and he takes them too, he wants to be whole again. 

He wakes up crying and his mouth is so dry he can’t speak and his throat is torn to shreds and there’s blood on his lips. He staggers to the bathroom, (a closet crammed with a toilet, sink and shower) and he drinks straight from the tap and it burns and he can’t keep any of it down. He coughs up bile, rusted red from his wrecked throat and he whimpers in fear and his legs give out. Then nausea rolls back and it’s unbearable. He vomits into the toilet until he can’t and then he retches so violently his throat tears further and his head pounds and his eyes blur. He drifts in and out of consciousness. This is not his usual brand of nightmare. Catelyn Stark is in his head offering him her heart and asking for her daughters. 

He doesn't realise he’s passed out completely until he wakes lying sticky in bile and dried blood. There’s something cold in him too, sheets of ice under his skin, in his mouth, and he’s shivering and sweating and his palms slip as he crawls back into the main room and his burnt hand is rubbed livid and raw. His hands are shaking so badly that he drops the phone’s receiver three times before managing to wedge it between his jaw and his shoulder. He hopes Brienne’s number hasn't changed. He hopes he can dial it without throwing up again or fainting or weeping. 

“Hello?’ Her voice is bleary and muffled but it’s the best thing he’s ever heard.

“B-brienne,” he stammers through chattering teeth. “Brienne.”

“You know where I live,” is all she says after a long, cold pause, and the dial tone sounds.

He drops the receiver from numb finger, notices a quarter filled bottle of whiskey in a drawer, sculls it without tasting it then messily throws it back up. He manages to tangle himself in a coat and scarf, he gets a cigarette to his mouth but can’t light it, he opens the door and staggers into the hallway.

For almost a year Brienne’s apartment had been his base, more like a home than his office was now even though his office had a (pull out) bed and Brienne’s had only had a thin foam mattress. (More like a home than Casterly Rock even though there he’d had a four poster bed and an entire wing to himself). But getting there is difficult. His office had come after he’d left her and he’d never made a trip between the two (and he’d _never_ been this sick out of his mind). It takes him almost an hour. He weaves doggedly across the pavement in half steps and shuffles and cries. Once he is hit so hard by nausea that he falls to his knees but his stomach is empty and all it produces is acid and burning. It eases slightly as he gets closer and he _knows_ that Brienne will save him (like he knows he is rotted and rotting still, he knew that before Stoneheart kissed him) and he hates her for it just a little bit. (One day she will stop saving him, one day she will only save innocents). 

He scratches on her door like a cat because he can’t make the fist or muster the strength needed to knock. When she opens it, he almost falls straight through.

“Jaime, what _happened_?”

“Your stone lady,” Jaime gasps. “She put a curse on me.” 

Brienne frowns. “No she didn't. You shouldn't have run.”

“I didn't _run_ ,” he argues, finally standing up straight. She has healed him, Brienne who is scowling at him with concern in the corners of her mouth.

“Would you like some tea?” 

“I would like a cigarette,” he fumbles around in a pocket and draws out his pack. 

“You couldn't smoke in here before, what makes you think I’ll let you now?”

“It’s my dying wish, kitten,” he flutters his eyelashes. He feels a million times better, he feels whole and furious at that thing that once was Catelyn Stark.

“Jaime.”

“Kitten,” he retorts but he puts the pack away with a sigh. “Do you have a drink at least?” 

Brienne pours them careful glasses of gin and she adds tonic to hers but Jaime takes it straight and winces around the taste and the way it burns his cut up throat. She is wrapped in a large blue robe and her hair is impossibly messy and he remembers this Brienne, sleepy and annoyed. More scarred now but the same still. He grins at her and she frowns at him and they sit down, her in an armchair with legs crossed and arms folded and him slouched on the couch, familiar like he’s living there still. 

“So what happened? You looked like you were _dying_.” 

“I told you, _Stoneheart_ put a curse on me.”

“It’s not a curse,” Brienne says awkwardly. “It must be the kiss...to keep us from straying.”

“Well why didn't it happen to you?”

“I never abandoned our task.”

“Neither did I,” Jaime lies, glaring into his glass. “I fully intended on coming to find you tomorrow.”

“Liar.” 

“Is this what will kill us if her children are dead? I’m not looking forward to throwing up my organs.”

“They might not be dead,” she says quietly. “But I didn't find Sansa when you asked me to.”

“I never asked you that, why would I ask you that?” Jaime can’t fathom this statement. He _thinks_ about saving innocents, but acting on it is something else, even if it’s through Brienne, good and true. 

“In the hospital after...you said they would prove something...you said _don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be_.” 

Jaime is silent for a long moment, he downs his remaining gin, he backs his hand further back into his sleeve, wishing he had gloves. “That’s from a film,” he sighs. “I wasn't...I was probably just trying to get your to leave.”

“I tried to do what you asked all the same,” she says with a shrug. 

_She’s the right girl_ , Jaime thinks, the right girl who is sweet with secrets, stuck with the wrong crowd, caught up in things she doesn't deserve to be caught up in. The girl who will end up covered in dirty handprints, pawed all over and left to die. The girl who will still look from the gutter to the stars. 

“I didn't find much, mostly I just found...new scars. And Stoneheart.” 

His hand grips the cold glass tighter and he thinks of other cold things. Cold kisses and thirteen year old brothers and sisters playing husband and wife. Cold even then. Cersei was the only child he could think of born with a thousand years behind her eyes. He puts his glass down, shuts his eyes and presses his cold fingers to his eyelids until his vision fades in and out with stars. Cersei and Stoneheart could form a gang, girls who kiss you to keep you theirs. Brienne would not make the grade.

She brings his the same mattress he used to use and worn sheets and a soft grey duvet.

“Just like old times,” he mumbles but she ignores him and leaves him to make the bed up on his own. When he falls asleep this time he doesn't dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading lovelies :)


	5. Chapter 5

In the morning he goes back briefly to his office to pack a small suitcase. He feels jittery being separated from Brienne, like Stoneheart will think he’s running and start stalking through his daytimes too. Like _intention_ matters for nothing. He belts his holster around his hips and keeps his good hand close to the trigger.

“I’m going to find your daughters,” he declares to the empty air of his office. He tugs his gloves on, and the phone rings.

For a brief, terrifying moment, he thinks it’s going to be Stoneheart hissing _liar_ down the wire and he stares at it and wills it to stop, but it doesn't. It’s loud and he’s frozen where he stands so he picks up the receiver.

“...James Dayne, Private Investigator?”

“ _Dayne_ ,” Cersei says. “ _James Dayne_?” 

“Um,” Jaime says. 

“Jaime, thank God I found you.” Her voice throbs with joy, her voice is thick as honey and warm as home. 

“You were looking?”

“Of course I was; you’re my brother,” she says patiently. “Last time I saw you was just awful, I was _worried_.”

Last time she’d seen him he’d thrown her out of another office, a different office, one that had burned soon after. Last time she’d seen him she’d been so dry eyed _she_ could have sparked flames and he’d been wet drunk and pleading. Last time she’d seen him she’d severed ties and he’d thrown her out and burnt his office down (and his skin down and his flesh down) and disappeared. She _knew_ that. She hadn’t come to the hospital.

“Worried...” 

“Jaime, you need to come _home_.” 

He wants her to stop saying his name. He thinks that if he says _her_ name she will own him again and he very carefully doesn't. 

“Home,” he laughs shortly. “Why?”

“Because it’s _home_ ,” she says and her voice slips slightly, lets scorn in, and Jaime relaxes. 

“Not for me, not anymore,” he says. “What do you really want?”

“I told you, I want _you back_ ,” she purrs.

Jaime wants to laugh, he’d joked that she was Veronica Lake, Lizabeth Scott, Rita Hayworth, but she is. She’ll destroy the world and she’ll keep her nails sharp and her lipstick perfect. She’s a thousand girls under that lipstick, sweet and innocent and cold and deadly. A monster with the face of a girl or a girl with the face of a monster. He imagines her as Gilda, _I hate you so much that I would destroy myself to take you down with me_ , and then he very carefully _doesn't_. Jaime closes his eyes.

“No you don’t.” 

“ _Fine_ , well I want to hire you then,” she snaps. “I’ll pay well.” 

“You’ll pay what I charge. What’s the job?” 

“I know you’re looking for Sansa Stark.”

“Not interested,” Jaime says. “Killing children is no longer a pastime of mine. Besides, she’s probably already dead.”

“No one said anything about _killing_ the girl, Jaime, I just want to talk to her.” 

“Of course you do. Still not interested.”

“Jaime,” she pleads, and once he would have given anything to hear that in her voice, to hear her say his name with _need_ , but now it just makes him feel ill.

“Find someone else.”

“As you wish,” she’s back to arch indifference. “But if you do find her and… and if you ever had any love for me, remember this request.” And she’s gone. Again. 

And Jaime tugs his gloves on and leaves.

He goes to the bar where Brienne is waiting for him because it’s quiet in the mornings and dark twenty four hours a day and no one will bother them. He doesn’t ask her why she isn’t at work and why she hadn’t been the day before either, it wouldn’t surprise him if she’d been fired. A woman police officer was rare to begin with, one that _fraternised with the enemy_ even on orders, rarer still. Brienne was probably proud to get fired for Catelyn Stark. He wonders if she would be proud to die for Stoneheart. 

He doesn’t tell her about Cersei.

“Any leads then?” he asks her, slumping into the seat. She wrinkles her nose, spreads her fingers flat on the table in front of her. 

“Since last night? No, Jaime,” she sighs. “I heard rumours Sansa was in the Riverlands with Sandor Clegane but that amounted to nothing. It was... it was someone else and there was no girl. Are you sure your family doesn’t have her or her sister?”

“Definitely not,” Jaime frowns. “Cersei would be crowing from the rooftops if she had either of the Stark girls. Lannisters aren’t subtle.”

“No,” Brienne smiles. “I heard too that Arya was somewhere North marrying Ramsay Bolton.”

“She’s _eight_.”

“It’s what I heard.” 

“North maybe, but not to be married.”

“Are there any Starks _left_? I thought perhaps the reward Catelyn set would still stand but there’s been no one offering it that I’ve heard of.” 

“No,” Jaime agrees with a sigh. “Lysa Tully has gone respectable and won’t have anything to do with any of it. Ben Stark has disappeared like the rest of them. Perhaps they’ve all holed up on an island together away from all this, but I doubt it.”

They go over every possible lead. Brienne writes lists of names and places and motivations, _the Riverlands, the Vale, money, power, money, money, money_. A waiter brings them bad burgers and Brienne a strawberry shake. Jaime picks at the food, leery of his delicate stomach, but it doesn’t stop him drinking (watered-down) whiskey and smoking like a chimney. 

They find nothing. Brienne circles words over and over again until they seem important, like Sansa really is in the Riverlands and she’d just missed her first time round. She writes _dead_ in a corner in small block capitals and doesn't circle it, doesn't even look at it. If Jaime were writing, he thinks that would be the only word he’d need. His death and Brienne’s death and the little baby Starks. 

Neither of them mention Stoneheart’s ability to be a mother. Neither of them mention the nightmare she is, the nightmare she will be for her long gone children. Jaime can tell it’s burning the tip of Brienne’s tongue but neither of them mention it.

It’s late afternoon before anyone else even enters the bar and when they do it’s someone Jaime knows and is not expecting. He doesn’t notice him straight away, though he’s hard to miss, taller even than Brienne and wide as a door and all in leather. Scarred to Hell and back on one side of his face. A brother in burns. 

Sandor Clegane heads for them immediately and Jaime sits up straight, brushes his fingers across the trigger of his gun, doesn’t break eye contact with Brienne who has gone stiff in her seat. 

“Lannister, fancy seeing you here,” Sandor growls when he gets to their booth. His voice is the rumble of thunder and his eyes are struck matchstick embers.

“What a coincidence,” Jaime deadpans, still not looking away from Brienne, who seems to be fraying at the edges, who has been circling a word so viciously the paper is near to tearing. He wonders if Sandor is working for his sister, he wonders if Sandor has fucked his sister.

“Maybe not,” Sandor shrugs. “Can I sit?” He sits. 

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Jaime asks, finally tearing his gaze away from Brienne. 

“I hear you’re lookin’ for the Stark kids.”

“And who’d you hear that from?” 

“Some fool with broken fingers,” Sandor grins. “Said he was working for a dead woman.”

“ _You’re,_ supposed to be dead,” Brienne hisses, looking up at him with eyes bright and terrified. “I saw your grave.”

“Did you now. Seems a lot of people with no rights to life are showin’ up alive anyway.”

“ _Go away_ ,” Brienne snaps. 

“What do you want?” Jaime asks, raising an eyebrow at Brienne, which she ignores.

“I got information, I’m lookin’ to sell it.” 

“Information about what?” 

“Sansa Stark, where she’s hiding.”

“And what do you want for it?”

“Insurance,” he looks at Brienne. “I know she’s a copper, or close to one, and I’ve done the sort of things that don’t mesh well with the law. I’d like ‘em wiped. I want to get out of here, I want to start new, and helping the Stark kid is something but I’ll need law help too.” 

Sandor’s words strike Jaime hard. They’re redemption words, they’re _clean slate_ words, they’re words he’s used himself, alone in a hospital with his hand half burned off, alone in an office with a head full of liquor and Cersei’s many faces flickering through his mind. Not alone, with Brienne, watching her save the world.

Brienne blinks, and blinks and blinks, and Jaime wonders if she really has been fired. It would be a shame, she was as good a cop as any.

“Fine,” Brienne says rawly, after a long silence, and she scratches _dead_ out in her notebook with a vicious slash. 

“Good,” Sandor nods, not pushing it. Maybe he can see the way Brienne’s eyes brim with honour. “The girl… Sansa, she was a good kid, she didn’t deserve to get boxed in with your godforsaken family. It’d be… it’d be nice to see her… back.” 

Brienne stares at him like her world is falling and Jaime isn’t quite sure what he’s hearing either. Sandor Clegane never showed sympathy toward anyone, — _the Hound_ followed orders, did what he was told, hurt who he was told, and he was never told to be _kind_. The Hound abandoned the Lannisters just as Jaime had, amid fire and smoke. 

“Alright, tell us then,” Jaime sighs, leans back against the shabby vinyl of the couch. 

“You heard Petyr Baelish recently sprung up a bastard daughter from nowhere? Full grown and everything,” Sandor smiles with all his teeth. “Pretty thing I’ve heard.” 

“Lysa Arryn’s husband?” Brienne asks, frowning.

“Catelyn Stark’s ex, or so he’ll have you believe,” Jaime says grimly. “He’s still in the Vale, last I heard.” 

Brienne looks down at her notepad, at _the Vale_ circled in spiky blue and she nods, underlines the words carefully. This is a place with towers and ice, perfect for maidens and innocence. Arya will come afterwards and Jaime will claim back his dirty honour and be done with them all. 

“We’ll need a car,” he says quietly. “It will take days to get up there.” 

“Sorted,” Sandor says, palming a set of keys onto the table, and Brienne is shaking her head already and Sandor is grinning as wide as he can, pulling at his scars, a nightmare, and Jaime closes his eyes and thinks of the end, his office and a cigarette and a glass three fingers full and nothing else will matter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I was a little hesitant about continuing after last weeks shit-show of an episode but instead I'm choosing to think of it as about as close to canon as this fic is. That way I can ignore it and continue watching for Sansa and Brienne-on-her-own-kicking-ass-taking-names and Cersei and all the rest of the ladies basically. Anyway. Thanks again friends ily! Especial thanks to memorde who betaed this and who is a champion of fixing-my-ellipses.


	6. Chapter 6

They leave before night falls. Brienne suggests they stay at her apartment and head out early - pointedly excluding Sandor from the conversation -  but Jaime is eager to get on the road and Sandor’s fists are tight-clenched like if he doesn't do _something_  he might just take the car and make a move on his own. There are still several hours of daylight left, they can _make time_. Brienne leaves them to pack some belongings and then it’s just Jaime and Sandor sat facing each other across a dirty table. Sandor is staring at him and smirking and Jaime knows exactly what it’s about is not surprised when the other man winks.

“Listen,” he says before Sandor can start. “Don’t speak to Brienne, don’t even look at her. In fact, if you ever meet her eye, I will put you in the ground.”  
  
“You can try, _little man_ ,” Sandor mutters. “You’re a head and a hand short, I wouldn’t want to ugly up your pretty face.”  
  
And they glare at each other across the table and for a brief moment Jaime thinks it might come to something he can’t handle. He can’t even make a fist, let alone swing with it. But then Sandor relaxes, shrugs, his grin comes back.  
  
“Whatever you say boss,” he says.  
  
Sandor’s car is a big, black monster, as ugly as he is. Brienne looks immediately dubious but apparently it passes whatever test she sets because a moment later she breezes passed both of them to climb in the back. They drive and she acts for all the world like she isn’t even really _present_. They drive and Sandor and Jaime smoke and only Jaime rolls down the window. They drive and Brienne stares into space and holds her bag in her lap and Jaime stares dead ahead and tries not to think about Stoneheart and the mountain of corpses he’s climbed to get where he is. He flicks ash onto the road. He closes his eyes when it hits twilight and lights shiver and flash under his eyelids and his mouth is dry like Stoneheart really is waiting behind every corner, ready to sink her cold fingers into his flesh and pull his heart out when his resolve wavers. And it will. His hands (both hands) keep drifting to the gun at his hip but he doesn't draw it. He’s not that fever-crazy, not yet, and he doesn't want the _Hound_ to rear his ugly head.  
  
“I call the car Stranger,” Sandor tells them, the only one who seems cheered by this drive. “Cos I don’t know where it came from.”  
  
“You named your car?” Jaime asks dumbly and in the back even Brienne laughs. Sandor falls into irritated silence and then there’s nothing but the glowing ends of cigarettes and the road sliding past.  
  
They stop at a motel just after dark. Brienne is out of the car as soon as it stops and stomping toward the office and Jaime bolts after her feeling shaky, feeling wild with night time air and terrified that Stoneheart will visit his dreams again. Brienne had saved him the night before, had saved him and saved him and would save him again.  
  
“Let’s get a room together,” he tells her and his laugh is a hiccup and Brienne frowns.  
  
“Absolutely not.”  
  
“We've lived together before,” Jaime grins shakily.  
  
“Yes, in separate rooms. And anyway, that’s different, that was...harbouring a criminal.”  
  
“Also at the behest of Catelyn Stark,” Jaime laughs bitterly. “Maybe she’s trying to get us to fall in love.”  
  
“Separate rooms,” Brienne repeats firmly.  
  
“Separate rooms,” Jaime sighs.  
  
They get two rooms. Sandor and Jaime share one with twin beds because it’s cheaper and none of them are exactly rolling in money. Sandor thinks that’s Jaime’s fault because he’s a Lannister and _what’s the point of a Lannister without cash_ and Jaime  doesn't even try to answer that question, partly because he’s not sure it isn't true. Mostly because he knows it is.

He buys a map from the motel manager who looks at Sandor like he’s a rabid beast and Brienne like she’s an unpleasant smell and Jaime like he’s shining golden. He wants to tell the man that he’s not, that he’s probably more likely to destroy his room than any of them, he wants to take off his gloves like his hand is proof but he doesn't, he just takes the map and grins at the man like they’re sharing secrets.

Brienne sits on the edge of a dirty purple chair, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, in Jaime and Sandor’s room. Sandor stretches out on his bed and Jaime sits on the floor. The map is spread out in front of him and Brienne sketches out routes because he still hasn't mastered left handed penmanship. The roads they’ll travel are winding and secret, up through the mountains to the Vale. They will stick to lesser known paths until they get to the High Road which becomes the _only_ way after a point. Sandor wants to travel through the night, take shifts at driving, but Brienne can’t drive and neither can Jaime with his hand and even though Sandor insists he can run on nothing (and even though it’s probably true), they agree that they will stop at nights. It will take them three days to get to the tower and rescue the princess.

“And we won’t hurt anyone,” Brienne informs Sandor primly, her eyes skidding over him, jittery and strained.

“Of course not,” Sandor laughs. “I’m a whole new man.”

Brienne opens her mouth, closes it, looks like she’s about to be torn in two by everything she’s not saying, and she breaks under the strain quickly.

“You _have_ to be new because you’re... _you_ are dead,” she says, almost pleading with him. Jaime carefully smooths down the corners of the map with his good hand, doesn't look up.

“You said that before, and here I am.”

“Someone wearing your face did this to mine,” she whispers, gesturing at the fraying bandage at her cheek. Jaime bites his tongue with keeping silent, looks at her as she glares desperately at Sandor.

“It wasn't me, it was some dog riding my tail.”

Brienne shoots up out of her chair and leaves the room with two quick, quiet strides. Jaime gets to his feet, finally rounds on Sandor.

“I told you not to talk to her,” he says, keeping his voice dangerous and slow and deliberately even. Some part of his reputation might not have burned up with his hand and Jaime Lannister was always _dangerous_.

“She started it,” Sandor mutters with a shrug. “I can’t help what people do with my name.”

“If you’re a _whole new man_ , do you think you could make him a _nicer_ one?”

“You fucking her?” Sandor asks instead of answering. “You act like someone who’s fucking her.”

“Be quiet,” Jaime hisses. “Don’t talk about her.”

“You know, all of us who worked for your family thought you were fucking your sister. This is _almost_ an improvement.”

“Shut your goddamned mouth,” Jaime steps forward then quickly rocks back on his heels, puts his hands behind his back, holding his right wrist with his left hand. It would not do to get his teeth knocked out on the first day of their journey.

“It’s good... _healthy_ ,” Sandor says and Jaime takes a step back this time, shakes his head instead of clenching his fists, and then he turns and follows Brienne.

He knocks on her door and she opens it and looks surprised to see him but not angry (he thinks, he hopes). She lets him in without a word and she sits on the edge of her bed, leans back on her hands, and he takes the armchair.

“Sandor was being...”

“I heard,” her mouth twists. “The walls are thin here.”

“Cheap motels,” Jaime says weakly.

They sit in silence for a long moment. Jaime stares hard at the fire, thinks there is nothing so dangerous, warmth and death entwined. It reminds him of Cersei and he curls his fingers into his palms. The fireplace in his room is cold. He and Sandor will freeze to death before they strike a match.

“When I was...when I got bitten,” Brienne says, startling him. “I was found by Stoneheart. I...I had a fever and I cried your name so often her men called me Lannister whore. That’s what convinced her I was working for you. That and your gun.”

“I’m sorry.”

He won’t ask her about who bit her, the person pretending to be Sandor Clegane, wearing his skin and teeth. She will tell him if she wants to, if he thinks it’s necessary. He would tell her about his hand if she asked, but she probably thinks she already knows.

“Nothing you could have done. You were...you were on my mind,” her cheeks flush slightly and it’s a strange look for her. Jaime wants to laugh but he doesn't. “Fever dreams aren't real.”

“No,” Jaime agrees quietly, watching the blush fade from her cheeks. “A man came to hire me once. He knew you.”

“I’m sorry,” she says immediately, knee-jerk, and this time he does laugh.

“I’m not. I punched him.”

“You _what_?”

“I was a little bit drunk and I used my burnt hand. It hurt like a bitch but he deserved it.”

“What was his name?”

“Ronnet Connington.”

“Oh...” Brienne’s hands clench like she might punch him too, just his name is enough, a phantom to hate. “He did deserve it.”

There is a longer silence and Jaime thinks he should leave but he doesn't want to. The room is warm like his isn't and if he’s not looking at the fire, if he’s just looking at Brienne, he can pretend that it’s coming from her. The thing to thaw him, to ease the rot, to warm all of his dead bits.

Brienne fidgets, tangles her hands in the rug that’s laid across the end of the bed.

“We have a long drive tomorrow,” she says hesitantly and Jaime knows what she means.

“Yes I’ll...goodnight, Brienne,” he says and he leaves before she can say anything more.

He doesn't sleep well that night. He lies awake and listens to Brienne’s nightmares. _Thin walls_. She chokes out cries and he takes swigs from his flask and thinks about what she would do if he went to her. To quiet her, to comfort her. She would hit him, or she wouldn't, she might even be grateful. But he doesn't, he just lies awake and eventually she stops crying and he can sleep.

Stoneheart doesn't visit his dreams but Cersei does. _If you do find Sansa Stark and if you ever had any love for me, remember this request_ , she says, over and over, until its all he can hear.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry for the absence, I was in hospital for awhile and then getting over being in hospital for awhile and then I decided I literally hate the show now but then I decided that it doesn't matter because I love Brienne and Jaime still and so here we are. Thank you to Jaimedayne aka dayinthelife for being such a wonderful beta and all around cool guy. Thank you to all of you for reading! Thank you to everyone!!


	7. Chapter 7

Jaime wakes before dawn, stuffed up and slow from lack of sleep. He splashes water on his face in the small, grey bathroom and he peers into the rust stained mirror in disgust. He looks like shit. His eyes are all shadows and his hair is lank and greasy and he desperately needs to shave. 

“Chin up,” he tells himself with a ghostly smile. 

He imagines what he will be after all of this. Golden once more, with a right hand that’s not scar tissue and skinny fingers with less flesh on them than they should have. Skeleton fingers. Missing fingers. He will save the Stark girls and their dead mother will kiss his hand back (Brienne will save the Stark girls and their dead mother will cut off both of his hands and chop the rest of him down like firewood). His smile turns almost ghoulish in the mirror, a skull, and he turns away, frowns at the dirty bathtub that is the only thing in the bathroom other than the small sink and toilet, and decides against washing his hair. He lies in bed and smokes, listens to Sandor snore, thinks of Cersei and of Sansa Stark, waits for Brienne to wake up.

The day is spent driving. Jaime talks incessantly to make up for Sandor and Brienne’s silence. He talks about nothing, a buzz of words that are more for himself than for anyone else. They drown out the changing landscape, the rocky foothills of the Vale, sprinklings of snow and leaf-bare shrubs, proof of where they’re going and why. It will be all white soon, blanket soft, and icy cold. 

He watches Brienne in the side mirror as she struggles with something silently, shifting in her seat and scowling out the window and wringing her hands. He wants to laugh but he doesn’t. Sandor does and it snaps Brienne up straight. 

“Your being here doesn’t make sense,” she tells Sandor irritably. “You’re a hired gun but we’re not _paying_ you.”

“Don’t need any money, took enough from your boy’s family when I left,” he grins at Jaime.

“They have too much of it,” Jaime shrugs.

“He’s not my boy,” Brienne says at the same time and Jaime laughs, winks at her in the mirror.

“ _You_ should be grateful,” Sandor points out. “I’m here on my own dime and you’re gonna need a guy who can shoot like I can before this is over, I'd bet on it.” 

“But _why_?” Brienne insists. “You don’t know me, you don’t _like_ Jaime. I don’t trust it.”

“You don’t need to trust it.”

“Then how do I know you won’t kill us in our sleep. How do I know you want hurt _Sansa_?” 

Jaime watches as Sandor’s hands twitch on the wheel, as his eyes flick to the mirror, to Brienne, and he sits up a little straighter. Brienne looks stubborn and defiant in the backseat, like she’d launch herself at him through the gap in the seats if she sensed a threat. She probably would. She’d probably do alright too, until the car rolled off the road.

“I told the girl I wouldn’t hurt her, and I won’t,” Sandor says carefully, like he’s testing the words out. “I don’t like bullies.”

And that’s it. The conversation stalls with just the right choice of words. Jaime meets Brienne’s eyes this time and she looks away. She’d said the same thing the day he moved in with her. _They’re my family_ , he’d retorted and she’d shrugged. _They can be both_ , she’d said, _I thought you wanted to leave_? And he can’t remember what his reply was but he remembers the way she had been looking at him. Head tilted, brow furrowed slightly, her eyes smoky blue and full of worry. Something new. 

The motel they stop at that night is even worse than the one before and the manager holds out a piece of paper to Jaime as soon as they enter the office. There’s a phone number written on it in splotchy blue ink. A number he knows off by heart already, an insult in ink really, and Cersei would have known it would sting.

“What’s this?” he asks, his voice raw and slow. 

“Some broad called, asked you to call back. It’s long distance, you’ll pay.” 

“How’d you know she wanted me?”

“She said a blond guy with gloves would come in looking like he’d been shit on by everything he ever loved. You got that look.” 

“Thanks,” Jaime mutters. He wonders if Cersei had mentioned that she’d been the one doing the shitting. Probably not. 

Brienne is watching him, Sandor is scowling. Jaime pays for the rooms and throws the keys at them, turning away before he can see the concern in Brienne’s eyes. She will know who _some broad_ is and she will assume Jaime has betrayed them. Sold a Stark for whatever a golden twin sister will give. He dials the number, aggressively ignoring her, tries not to flinch at the dull bell that sounds when she leaves. Sandor is laughing as he follows her out, the first sound he’s made since _I don’t like bullies_. 

The dial tone sounds so long he almost hangs up and that feels deliberate too, like blue ink spelling out a number Cersei _knows_ he could recite in his sleep. Like Cersei leaving him a message and knowing he wouldn't be alone to receive it. Like Cersei calling only when he really doesn't want her to. Like Cersei existing. 

“Jaime,” she purrs instead of a greeting. “You’re driving rather slowly.” 

“What do you want?” 

“I just want to know how my job is going, brother mine. I left messages at a dozen different places when I learnt you were going to the Vale but I expected a call much sooner than this from any of them. What’s keeping you?” 

“I’m not working for you,” he snaps. The motel manager raises an eyebrow. “I won’t call you again.” 

“Don’t forget me, Jaime,” she sounds wounded. He imagines her green eyes big and shining with tears. He imagines them spilling down her cheeks. He imagines licking them off. He slams the receiver down, throws a couple of crumpled bills at the manager, and leaves the room. He wonders how she knows where they are and he stares down the icy road outside for a long time, but the only car he sees is Sandor’s Stranger, a duller black than the star-cut night. 

Brienne has her own room again (because they _are_ the only people travelling here, there aren't many people on the high road in winter), and it is Jaime who has nightmares this time. He dreams of Sansa Stark with red hair and rosebud lips. He dreams he has her tied in ropes of ice and he gives her to Cersei who has fire falling from her eyes and red palms and who kisses Sansa on both cheeks leaving wounds that rot open revealing teeth like pearls. Sansa doesn't make a sound and Jaime looks at his hands and they are both whole and red to match his sister’s. 

He dreams of Lady Stoneheart and gore and death and terror.

He dreams of Brienne dressed in armour, holding a sword, and there’s blood everywhere but it doesn't seem to be coming from anything and Brienne is crying. He reaches to her with his burnt hand and she stumbles backwards and he looks down and realises that it’s him that’s bleeding. He’s cut in half shoulder to navel and he’s _made_ of blood and Brienne’s sword is stained red and she’s _crying_. 

He wakes up clutching at his stomach so hard his burnt hand aches and he almost falls out of the narrow bed. He gets up and goes outside, cold in just t-shirt and shorts, cold with blood and death behind his eyes still. He knocks on Brienne’s door and she opens it and there are tears on her cheeks and he knows she has been dreaming too. She lets him in without a word and he settles in the armchair by her bed and she doesn't fight it.

Jaime is kicked out of Brienne’s room early, as soon as she wakes up, and he leaves to find Sandor, leaning against his car, picking at his fingernails with a toothpick.

“You really are fucking her then?” Sandor asks. 

“Nope,” Jaime sighs. He’s dirtier still, his tongue is tacky and his neck hurts and his hair is a nightmare. Cersei would have a fit if she saw him. “I slept in a chair.”

“And she _let_ you?” Sandor laughs. “I’d bet anything you’ll be fucking before this trip is done.” 

Behind them, Brienne’s door opens and she steps out. 

“You bet on anything to do with me and I’ll cut your balls off,” she mutters, breezing past Jaime and toward the car. 

Jaime lights a cigarette and jams a hat down over his greasy hair, thinks that Humphrey Bogart never looked like this. Thinks that Lauren Bacall was as far from Brienne as possible. Except for the voice maybe. Except for the stare. He imagines that stare, Brienne smirking at him just a little, _just put your lips together and blow_ , and he bites down on the end of his cigarette, spits it out when it splits and his mouth is flooded with gritty tobacco.

“Promise you’ll be gentle, Slim?” he calls to Brienne, walking after her, and she actually laughs. 

They drive and Jaime stares out the window, keeps one eye on the side mirror, waits to see something following them. Cersei in a giant scarlet convertible with a scarf flying out behind her and her lips painted to match and her hair, perfect and bright blonde. Not like his, they’re twins in different shades of blonde. She’s dirty on the inside. He winds down the window, tilts his head into the air. _Don’t forget me, Jaime_ , Cersei had said. _If they are dead, so are you_ , Lady Stoneheart had said. _I don’t like bullies_ , Brienne had said. As the road slips away under him, nausea rises.

“Pull over,” he chokes out to Sandor, tugging on the door handle, opening it before the car has stopped. He’s on his knees in the middle of the empty road, he’s choking up bile, blinking back tears. He hears a door slam behind him, feels Brienne crouch beside him.

“There _is_ a curse on me,” he tells her. “Catelyn Stark is rotting me to pieces.” 

“No she isn't, Jaime,” Brienne says quietly. Her hand is at the small of his back, rubbing slowly in circles. “You’re doing that fine on your own.” 

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispers to the dirt and that might be the truest thing he’s ever said. “Cersei wants me to do something for her and _I don’t know what to do_.” 

“We’ll keep driving,” she replies after a pause. “We’ll get there and we’ll find Sansa Stark and you’ll make a decision.” 

“ _Tell_ me what to do.”

“No, Jaime.”

“You’re the one who saves people, you’re a hero, you have to _save me_.” 

“No, Jaime,” her voice is thick, all he can see is the road. “I’m not your babysitter and I won’t be some symbol of good for you either. I’m not perfect and _you_ are capable of doing all of this yourself. Without Catelyn Stark or your sister or me.”

Jaime is silent, he can only think of how he probably smells terrible, like vomit and dirt, and how Brienne is still so close to him. He can only think about the way her hand is moving against his shirt. She’s right. The _right girl_. This will tear him to pieces, he thinks, this whole thing, and she won’t be there to patch him up because she thinks he can do it himself. He’ll prove her wrong then, the _wrong girl_ , when he disintegrates in front of her. 

They go back to the car and Jaime sits in the back with Brienne and he shuts his eyes, leaning on her shoulder and pretending to sleep. She doesn't even complain about his hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time, kids, i'm sorry! Thank you for reading, as always. This chapter is dedicated to Lauren Bacall obviously. Thank you to jaimedayne aka botticellistyles aka dayinthelife for being a champion beta again! and also to scvlly who is my all time fave and best lady. xoxo


	8. Chapter 8

Jaime buys a bottle of whiskey from the motel manager on their last night. He goes to Brienne’s room and sits in her armchair to drink it and she lets him. It’s the night before the final stretch and she falls asleep with him still in her room but not even that (not even the alcohol) makes Jaime feel less drained, less sea-salt dry. He falls asleep briefly and wakes up and drinks and falls asleep again and when he wakes up for the last time, in the early hours of the morning, he has a stiff neck and a tacky mouth and he _creaks_ when he gets to his feet. He’s grown old in a few days, he thinks, his sins have settled properly into his bones. Soon they will be all that’s left of him.

He’s drunk still but there’s a quarter of the bottle left so he downs that and it doesn’t make anything better or worse. Brienne is sleeping and he watches her for a moment. She is curled in on herself, as small as someone so large can get, and she is snoring, and she is frowning. Cersei slept on silk sheets, in silk nightgowns, with silk skin, silk hands, silk hair, and her brow was smooth. It still is, he imagines, there’s no sin on her she can’t wash off. Brienne’s sins lie just under her skin, ready to break free at the lightest scratch. There are not many of them. She doesn't deserve the company of Lannisters and their dogs, acting like she’s at their level.

He shifts uncomfortably, turns away from her to look at the ugly painting on the opposite wall. Painted daisies are safer, he thinks, they’re not likely to hit him if they catch him watching them sleep. _I’m not your babysitter_ she’d said. _You are capable of doing all of this yourself_ , she’d said. And he’d drunk himself to sleep in her room. He wonders how it was possible for her to sound so convinced. She still thinks he will do the right thing.

“I will,” he tells the painted daisies, quiet enough that it doesn't wake Brienne. Quiet enough that he can forget he ever said it when he needs to. 

Then he shakes his head and sways to his feet. In the bathroom he finds a bath with a hole rusted through one end, a sink, and a piss stained toilet. He awkwardly washes his hair in the sink with some mind to clear his head. There’s only a small piece of cracked, yellow soap and with only one hand and pins and needles drunk it’s difficult and his shoulders end up drenched and his fingers sting viciously but he does feel a little more alive afterwards, a little more ready to face their last day of driving. Maybe the motel manager will sell him another bottle. 

They’ll reach the Vale before nightfall. And then what? Brienne will punch the bad guy in the face and they’ll swan out of there in a white cadillac. Jaime will punch the bad guy in the face and _he’ll_ swan out of there with the Stark girl in tow and he’ll never see Brienne again. He’ll rot down to nothing but sin and bones but Cersei will be happy. 

“You’re a dead man, except for the breathing,” he tells himself, and he laughs, shakes the water from his hair, and goes back to the room where Brienne is sleeping. 

He crawls onto the bed next to her, above the quilt, not touching her, of course not, never. She startles awake anyway, her fists clenched, always ready in case her nightmares follow her into waking. Jaime laughs when she realises what is happening and recoils. It’s a proper reaction, one he deserves. It hurts a little bit, even though it shouldn't. 

“Jaime?” she blinks, grinds a knuckle into her eye socket, blinks again. 

“You’re going to be . . . you _are_ going to be the one who saves me,” he tells her, looking at his burnt hand because he can’t look at her anymore. He brandishes the hand at her, hisses in pain as he splays the remains of his fingers. “You left me and I did _this_.” 

“You left _me_ ,” Brienne gasps in outrage, sitting up to frown at him. “After the . . . wedding, you left.” 

“You thought I’d done it,” Jaime mumbles. “Just like you think I’ll give Cersei Sansa Stark, because you’re right, because I want to. You thought I’d killed them too, helped my family destroy another family. But I shouldn't have left...I need you to keep me right.” 

“I don’t think you will give up Sansa, even if you want to, and you _don’t_ need me,” Brienne says quietly. She doesn't deny the other part, the part where she’d thought he’d wiped out an entire wedding party for an insult. “You need to find someone else for that, yourself probably, I don’t know, but I won’t be what you want. I’d make a terrible hero.” 

“You’re a _dream_ ,” Jaime whispers, feeling half asleep himself. “You’re an angel with a light guiding me through Hell, you’re the only thing I know will always be there.” 

“You’re drunk,” she says, flatly. “And you’re talking rubbish. We’re doing this thing together, Jaime, but I told you, I’m not your symbol or your saviour. I’m just...I can be your friend.” 

“Kiss me,” Jaime reaches out to her and her cheeks flare red and she dodges away from his hands and gets off the bed. 

“No,” she says through gritted teeth. “You’re _drunk_.” 

“Would you kiss me sober?” 

She goes very still and her expression is deadly, ice-in-veins and stiff with anger. Then she shivers, shakes it out, a subtle swivel of her shoulders that he only notices because he’s drunk and he's fixed on her. 

“No,” she says after a long pause, the word voiced like it’s been pushed out through tar. “Go to sleep Jaime, I’ll wake you in an hour or so.” 

“Go to sleep Jaime,” he echoes with a sigh and he lies back in her bed and closes his eyes to Brienne and to Cersei and to the daisies. 

The Vale sits in a valley at the end of the world. It’s mid afternoon still but the place is grey and wet. It was a mining town once, coal or iron, something as hard and cold as the place itself, Jaime doesn't remember. It was a mining town once but now it’s a ghost town. There are houses, abandoned, and a small petrol station, not abandoned, and the worst motel in England for people who come to look at the falls. The Eyrie stands above it all, called so because of the carnivorous birds that live in it’s rafters still. Jaime has heard several stories of eyes plucked out by those stupid enough to go looking for eggs or chicks or feathers. Jaime hates the place, because it’s cold and because it’s hard, and because the Lannisters have always hated the Arryns who live in their tower like they’re above everyone else in more ways than just the obvious. 

“Those pigeons need their feathers plucked,” his father had often told him. 

“Rats with wings,” young Joffrey had agreed. 

Jaime drums the fingers of his good hand across his lower lip, tugs his hat down lower over his eyes. His head is throbbing and his toes are numb and not even the scarf Brienne had wound around his neck is keeping him warm. 

"A godforsaken place,” he informs the rest of the car. 

“It’s quite beautiful,” Brienne says quietly from the back seat. 

“It’s Hell frozen over,” Sandor mutters bitterly. 

They go to the motel first because they've formed a habit or because Brienne actually likes the worst motel in England or because they’re all scared to go further. Jamie isn’t scared for himself, he’s scared for Brienne. She’s never met Baelish, doesn’t know how he is or what he’s capable of. He thinks its probably more than even he realises. He thinks his sister probably knows. 

In the motel they all sit in one room and Sandor paces it’s perimeter like a dog in a cage. Jaime thinks he’d rip Petyr Baelish’s face right off if he got the chance and he wonders, not for the first time, how he grew to care for the Stark girl. 

They decide on a plan. They’ll head for the Eyrie before it’s dark, they’ll introduce themselves through official channels, a disgraced cop and a disgraced Lannister and a disgraced dead man coming to break bread with the hidden rulers of the North. They'll make themselves known, create fear, then come back after dark. 

“Brienne, you’ll have to be careful with Baelish, he’s got...he’s old fashioned about women, likes them in a dress or nothing at all.” 

“Are you telling me what to wear?” Brienne asks dangerously. 

“No, I’m telling you...he will be more likely to cooperate if you don’t look like you want to beat him to a pulp.” 

“And a dress will help with that?” 

“It’ll help Sansa,” Jaime says and he wants to laugh at the murderous expression that flashes across Brienne’s face, but he doesn't think it’s worth the risk. She leaves the room a moment later muttering something about _dresses_ and _the middle of nowhere_. 

Sandor has finally stopped pacing and is sitting in a chair as far from the fireplace as he can get, scowling like thunder, scowling like it’s the only expression he knows, which is almost true. 

“ _You’re_ not coming at all,” Jaime tells him. 

Sandor doesn't move but his eyes narrow a fraction and his hands shift on the arms of the chair like he’s preparing to rip them off. 

“You said I could help the girl.” 

“You can...by staying here. What do you think Baelish is gonna think of the supposed-to-be-dead ex-bodyguard of the family he stole Sansa Stark from shows up with _me_?” Jaime frowns. “And sure, maybe you could kill them all with your bare hands but it’s not worth risking the girls life over.” 

For a moment Sandor looks like he’s going to argue, or he’s going to rip Jaime’s face off instead and storm the castle. It wouldn’t be a surprise. But instead he just gets to his feet and leaves, slamming the door behind him, rattling a painting off the wall. Jaime stays. He waits. He let’s the fire die. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO! like seven months later ... sorry about that ... and i can't promise it won't be seven more months til the next but ... .. . thank you for reading anyway! I do love you and I do love this and WILL be finished one day!


	9. Chapter 9

By some miracle the hotel manager knows a woman named Myranda who makes dresses and the girl who makes the beds agrees to take Brienne to meet her. The girl is called Mya and she looks so much like so many dead men that Jaime can't help but glare at her. She glares right back and her blue eyes are the storms at Storm’s End and Jaime looks away first. His mouth tastes of stomach acid still and he is sure he’s lost half of his mind already. He’ll lose the other half to Cersei some day soon, even if he doesn't give her Sansa. 

Brienne disappears with Mya, neither of them looking enthusiastic about the task, and Sandor comes back and he and Jaime are left alone. Jaime paces and plots (and drinks, and smokes); he snaps at Sandor and Sandor snaps back. They keep to the edges of the room like even the embers of a fire might burn them both to ash.

Brienne is dressed already when Jaime sees her next, an hour of rumbling silence later. She is in a blue dress with buttons and a full skirt. _She looks nice_ , Jaime thinks, blinking. She looks like a woman, even with her thick waist and broad shoulders. The skirt does something and the blue does something and her scowl does something.

“You look...good, Brienne,” he tells her honestly. 

“It’s...the _new look_ ,” Brienne says, tugging at the skirt and shrugging like she doesn't really understand the words she’s saying. “It fit.” 

She’s wearing creased leather lace up shoes with the dress and that’s a bit wrong but it wouldn't suit her to be immaculate. Even Sandor grins at her. And her cheeks flush pink and stay pink and Jaime can’t tell if he hates Sandor for noticing her or Brienne for reacting. She hadn't blushed at _his_ compliment. 

Jaime tries to look presentable next to her. He’d hung his jacket in the bathroom while he bathed, hoping to steam out the wrinkles, but it remained stubbornly creased. He’d finger-combed his hair but it only made it more obvious that there had been no soap in the bathroom. When he shrugs his jacket on Brienne frowns at him, and purses her lips, and shakes out her skirt like she’s annoyed that she had to make an effort while he’s going to visit the Eyrie in a wrinkled jacket and dirty hair.

“The North isn't good for me,” he tries to explain.

“I've never seen a Lannister so ugly,” Sandor growls, obviously delighted. 

“Wait,” Brienne orders, and she disappears into the hallway. 

She comes back with a tie held gingerly in one hand. It is dark green and narrow and the fabric is cheap and Jaime stares at it. 

“I got it from Myranda,” Brienne says awkwardly. “I thought green would be best for...”

“You should have got blue,” Jaime says, finally looking at her. “So we matched. We could pretend we were going to a school dance, I would have bought flowers for your wrist.” 

Brienne blushes scarlet at that and Jaime is triumphant. She'd thought to match his eyes, he thinks, and he knows it should not thrill him so much, but it does. His girl in blue, his girl wreathed in blushes, his right girl. He laughs, a feverish sound, like someone on the edge of terror. 

“You’ll have to tie it,” he says, still grinning, and he pinches the hollow fingers of his glove, and he smiles wider. 

Brienne doesn't say anything to that, she just drapes the tie around his neck, and tucks it under his collar. Her fingers are brisk and businesslike when she knots it at his throat. He thinks he would like to feel her hands on his skin in some other way, he thinks she could be sweet if she tried, if she wanted to, if he wanted her to. He bites his lip when the tips of her fingers drag across his neck. She keeps her eyes on the knot and he keeps his eyes on the blushes fading from her cheeks, and the new bandage, white against the pink, cresting her cheekbone.

They leave Sandor behind in a cold room. Mya drives them up to the Eyrie in her rust-stained pickup truck, and in the front seat she talks to Brienne like they are old friends. Of course Brienne befriends a strange girl with bony elbows and untied shoelaces. Jaime watches the road as they climb cliffs in a car that should definitely not be traversing such a steep incline. He watches the rocks that crumble and fall away. They are so high up that he can see green at the bottom of the cliffs, miles away, even though the road underneath them is muddy snow. The tires slip sideways and Mya spins the wheel the opposite way and Jaime wonders how Sandor will do following them because there is no way Sandor isn’t following them. 

The Eyrie is a spiky, black silhouette against the grey sky. Some of the windows are lit gold but most of them are dark. Jaime’s insides twist when he sees it, he feels that much closer to death. Brienne has her lion stamped gun in her purse and Jaime has his tucked into the back of his trousers, but he is sure he will die here. He will die and he will satisfy neither his right girl nor his wrong one. Brienne will not get Sansa if he dies and neither will Cersei. He is not certain that it wouldn't be better for everyone. He gets out of the car. 

“Baelish won’t like you,” he tells Brienne after she’s said her goodbyes to Mya and the truck has roared off down the road and they’re standing, staring up at the building. 

“I am used to making bad first impressions,” Brienne mutters, her mouth quirking into something like a smile. “I don’t care for his opinion of me.”

“I would follow you anywhere,” Jaime tells her, biting back at the silence that surrounds them. He is going to die here and he is going to do it _gladly_. For her. 

Brienne pushes the toe of her shoe through the icy slush on the ground. She makes a gesture like she wants to put her hands in her pockets but the dress hasn't got them and her hands fall limply to her sides instead. Then she looks at him, and her eyes pierce him somewhere, his heart maybe, some place that has not yet rotted away. If they were anywhere else, he might be brave enough to touch her, but the Eyrie looms above them, and death feels too close now. He will not make this harder for her.

“We’re going together,” she tells him, and her voice is low and gentle and brave. Jaime looks away.

“Don’t do anything stupid.” he says, without looking back.

Brienne laughs, and then she leans on him, very briefly, just a press of her shoulder to his, just some small and comfortable touch, and Jaime is definitely going to die. They’re going to knock on the door, they’re going to sit at the dining table, they’re going to make polite conversation. Petyr Baelish is going to take one look at Jaime and shoot him in the face. And Brienne will... Brienne will kill Baelish and save Sansa Stark. Jaime sighs, lets everything out in a breath, and squares his shoulders. 

They knock on the door. Brienne does, actually, and a girl opens it. A girl with blue eyes and high cheekbones and dark hair. 

“Sansa Stark,” Brienne breathes, and all hell breaks loose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obviously i had to put Brienne in Dior.


	10. Chapter 10

It’s Stranger, roaring out of the darkness, rumbling like a rabid dog, spitting up gravel and mud. Jaime knew that Sandor would come after them, but it doesn’t make the reality any less startling, and the raw of the engine makes him shiver. It is some comfort, perhaps, that he didn’t break his fingers on the rocks trying to climb for redemption or some other useless thing. They will have another gun hand, Jaime thinks, though Baelish is sure to have more. 

“My name is Alayne Stone,” says the girl, and she moves to shut the door, and it’s Brienne who puts a hand out to stop her. 

“Miss Stark,” she starts. “Sansa, your mother sent us.”

 _A dead woman sent us_ , Jaime thinks, _a ghoul sent us_. He finds that he can’t move. Cersei is whispering in his head and this girl is the last living piece of the North and Jaime can barely even look at her. His family killed hers. He shot her father in the knee. Joffrey took her father's head. Tywin took the rest. He takes a step back and Brienne holds him in place with a hand at his wrist and he thinks he stops breathing. There is dark shadow behind Sansa Stark and the hallway is full of cobwebs. Sandor has emerged from his car and the girl watches him with wide eyes, her fingers plucking at her skirt. 

“My mother is dead,” she says. “My mother is dead, my father...” She looks at Jaime and he looks away.

“You keep finding new cages, little bird,” says Sandor. 

“My name is Alayne Stone,” says Sansa, and then there is a gun at her temple and an arm around her throat. 

It is Petyr Baelish, creeping down stone hallways, holding a gun to his false daughter’s head. Petyr Baelish who loved her mother, Petyr Baelish who told anyone who listened that he’d fucked both Tully girls. But he hadn’t married the one he wanted, Jaime thinks grimly. Perhaps Lysa Tully is still inside somewhere, alive and glowing with marriage, but he doubts it. 

Sansa’s eyes are closed but there are no tears caught in her lashes. She is still as stone and her hands are softly clasped in front of her, folded against her skirt, like she is praying. Like she is caught in a dream. She will let him take her to Cersei because all she knows is trauma. She has grown familiar with it. Jaime thinks that perhaps death at the hands of Baelish is the kindest death she could hope for and he bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from saying it.

“A Lannister and a Clegane and a...” starts Petyr, his eyes travelling over them, stopping to rest on Brienne. “What exactly _are_ you?”

“My name is Brienne Tarth,” she says stiffly. “We’re here for Sansa Stark.”

“My sister sent us here,” says Jaime, willing Brienne to be silent. “Cersei wants her.” 

Sansa’s eyes open, just for a moment, Tully blue and full of hate. _Me too Sansa Stark_ , Jaime thinks, _but I will still go to her_. He tugs at the tie Brienne gave him and he squares his shoulders at Baelish.

“I thought you’d fallen out of favour with your lovely sister,” Baelish purrs, and he is moving back, into the darkness, pulling Sansa with him. Sansa who has a tattered skirt and scuffed shoes. Sansa in a castle that is dying around her. Perhaps Baelish doesn’t outgun them after all.

“Give us the girl or I’ll break your face,” Sandor growls, moving to follow him, stopping only when Brienne holds out her arm. Swiping it away but stopping all the same.

“And you left the Lannisters,” Baelish continues. “And last I heard Tarth was only loyal to the Baratheons.”

“Last I heard you were loyal to everyone,” Jaime mutters. “Last I heard you were working for Ned Stark _and_ you were his wife's lover and her sister’s husband and the bosom friend of my father.”

“Things get muddy in war,” Baelish smiles. 

“Only someone who’s never been in war would call it that,” spits Jaime. “This is children throwing stones.” 

“How’s your hand?” 

“Where’s Lysa Tully?” 

“Sansa,” says Brienne, so quietly that everyone stops, pulled out of the noise around them. Brienne’s hand has returned to Jaime’s wrist and he shakes under her touch. “What do you want to do?” 

“My name is Alanye Stone,” says the Sansa, and finally there are tears in her eyes. “Is my mother alive?” 

“ _I will shoot her_ ,” hisses Baelish, pulling his arm tighter around Sansa’s neck. 

“If you shoot her you’ll die,” says Jaime.

“Is Catelyn alive?” Baelish asks, and there is uncertainty in his voice somewhere, a tone that Jaime has never heard from him, and he knows that they have won.

It’s Brienne who knocks the gun from his hand, letting go of Jaime to do it, and it’s Sandor who slams the heel of his palm into Baelish’s nose, dropping him to the floor. It’s Jaime who is faced with Sansa Stark, her cheeks silvered with tears, trembling like a leaf, pressing her fingers to the place where the muzzle of a gun just rested. She looks so much like Catelyn Stark and nothing at all like the dead thing they’re taking her to. 

“Is there anyone else here?” he asks her, to quiet his guilt. This was supposed to be where he died, to get him out of everything that came after. Selling this girl to a dead woman or to a woman who will kill her.

“No,” Sansa whispers. “He sent all the servants away. He...he pushed my aunt off the cliffs.” 

Brienne has produced handcuffs from somewhere, a policewoman’s magic trick, and she cuffs Baelish, propping him up against the wall. His clothing is ragged too and the blood covers most of the lower half of his face. 

“You want me to kill him?” Sandor asks, and it takes a moment for Jaime to realise he’s talking to Sansa.

“No,” she says. “Leave him here. He’s been abandoned by everyone he knows. There is no electricity here, no phone. Winter is coming.” 

Jaime feels like someone is playing a game with them. Petyr Baelish is bleeding on the floor but that can’t be all that the Eyrie is. It has been too easy. No one is dead, no shots were fired, and Sansa has stopped crying. There are corridors of shadow stretching out in front of him and Brienne’s fingerprints on the inside of his wrist tickle at his skin and the last piece of the North is looking at him like he’s a snake in a basket. 

“Are you taking me to Cersei?” she asks.

“No,” says Brienne, only glancing at Jaime for a moment. “We’re...we’re taking you somewhere else. Do you have any belongings?”

“Yes.”

“Jaime, please go with her.” 

Jaime looks at Brienne, blue girl in a blue dress, and she doesn’t look away. She is white light and cold steel and her eyes are so beautiful it makes his jaw ache. She is handing him Sansa Stark on a plate and she is unbreakable and he hates her for it a little bit. He deserves to be tested like this, but he resents it too. This is supposed to be the part where he throws the ingenue to the lions and tips his hat over his eyes and disappears into smoke. This is supposed to be the part where he picks the woman in red. He wonders if Brienne will be smug when he betrays her. Probably not.

Sansa starts to walk down the corridor and Jaime follows. She looks feverish, pink around the eyes, and he can see the red in her hair now, dulled by muddy dye. He does not draw his gun. The Eyrie is falling to pieces. There are cracks in the walls and dust brackets them, puffing up into clouds as they walk. Rats scuttle along the skirting and there are birds nests in the high corners of rooms. Jaime has been here before, for Lysa Arryn’s first wedding. The floors had been polished to gleaming and heavy silk curtains hung at every window and stained glass sent coloured lights to dance. Jaime thinks he might understand the mind of a man so paranoid he cuts himself off from the rest of the world. So paranoid he steals a child and cuts himself off from the rest of the world. So paranoid he steals a child and kills his wife and cuts himself off from the rest of the world. Perhaps he will die here still. Perhaps Sansa will slide a knife between his ribs and the rats will chew on his bones. 

Her room is tidier than the rest of the castle. There is a bed, draped in dusty rose, and a desk and chair. There are cones of melted wax on the side table next to the bed, topped with dirty stubs of candle wick. Jaime flicks at the light switch while she packs, strangely satisfied by the pointless act. The dulled light bulbs almost convince him that there is no one waiting in the shadows to carve out his heart. Perhaps Cersei is here already, with a plate in her hands.

Sansa packs a leather hat box with a cloth doll, a bundle of papers, a small book, scraps of fabric that might be clothing. There is a jewellery box full of glittering things that she ignores completely. The gifts of the man who loved her mother, Jaime thinks, and he flicks the light switch until he stops feeling ill.

“Is my mother dead?” Sansa asks him, holding the box in front of her, upright and dry eyed. 

“Yes,” says Jaime, unable to lie to her. “She left something behind but she is dead.”

“Are you going to kill me?” 

“No,” says Jaime, and that is not a lie either. “Brienne is...Brienne is good. She will keep you safe.”

Sansa looks at him for a long time, standing in the doorway with his hand on the switch of a light. She must see something because her gaze falls and her hands tighten on the handle of her bag and she brushes past him like she has known him all her short life. Like contact is casual. 

He follows her back through the echoing rooms and with every step he thinks he’s getting closer to the thing that will trip him up. The thing that will cut his borrowed time short. The cliff he will walk over, like Lysa Tully. But they reach Brienne and Sandor without incident and Petyr Baelish is still bleeding on the floor and when they leave the Eyrie Brienne curls her hand around the wrist of his ruined hand, gentle on the burns that border his palm. _My right girl_ , Jaime thinks, and he swallows the stuttering beat of his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok! i'm gonna say i'm sorry like always for taking so long. this is actually one of my favourite things i've written so it will be finished. i promise i promise. also ok. i'm not good at tension, i can't write action, so i just. don't. i regret ending the last chapter like there was going to be some big fight soon. maybe there will be eventually. if i am brave. i don't know. thank you for reading though. i love you all!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! In honour of the nearly-here new season I've written something new! Basically because I want to make references to noir movies I like and pretty actresses I like and because I want to think of Brienne in a trench coat and Jaime chain smoking...ahem. Thanks to Isy (memorde/unsfzpxkable) for being a cool lady and beta-ing yep.


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